Pentagon Reaches for Stars to Recruit

The Pentagon is looking for a few good movie stars.

Struggling to fill its ranks, the Defense Department is trying to enlist top Hollywood talent, such as Robert De Niro, Tom Cruise, Harrison Ford and Julia Roberts, to talk to young people in unpaid public service advertisements about opportunities in the military.

Pentagon officials also are trying to line up top directors, such as Steven Spielberg and Jerry Bruckheimer, as well as professional athletes.

Defense Secretary William S. Cohen told reporters Friday that he and his wife, Janet, have personally approached about a dozen movie stars, including De Niro, Cruise, Ford and Roberts, about appearing in radio and TV ads promoting military service.

Though specific commitments have not yet been made, the general responses have been “all very positive,” Cohen said. “They said: ‘We’d like to help.’ ”

Polls show that the military is one of the most respected American institutions, yet young people are increasingly unaware of the way it operates and the opportunities it offers.

Cohen, who has made a major effort to try to reconnect the civilian and military worlds, said that defense officials see these celebrities as “influencers” who can draw the attention of youths whose minds are on other things.

“We’re looking for every which way we can to influence the young people we need to come into the military,” he said.

Also approached was actor James Brolin, who plays Marine Corps Lt. Col. Bill Kelly on the syndicated TV series “Pensacola: Wings of Gold.”

Cohen said many of the celebrities have never before been approached to help out in this way.

The Pentagon doesn’t consider it essential for celebrity endorsers to have served in the military themselves. Ford, for example, was a conscientious objector during the Vietnam era.

The Pentagon also hopes to receive some positive exposure from several new movies and TV productions about the military.

Producer Spielberg, who made the patriotic movie “Saving Private Ryan,” about the invasion of Europe in World War II, is working on a TV production about life in the Marines. He has gotten top-level cooperation from the military.

Bruckheimer, whose 1986 film, “Top Gun,” sent Air Force enlistments soaring, will begin production this spring on a movie about Pearl Harbor and its aftermath. Bruckheimer approached Pentagon officials this month to win their cooperation on the project.

Besides aiming at potential recruits, Cohen wants to make more use of celebrities as morale-boosters for forces in the field. Last month, he took a group of celebrities, including model Christie Brinkley and former National Football League stars Terry Bradshaw and Mike Singletary, to Kosovo and Bosnia to meet with U.S. troops on peacekeeping duty.

The Hollywood outreach campaign is part of a broader effort to reshape the Pentagon’s communications strategy.

The department has overhauled its approach to advertising. It is spending a smaller share on big-ticket events such as the Super Bowl and making greater efforts to reach young people on the Internet and through e-mail, Cohen said.

With the economy still superheated and private-sector job opportunities pervasive, the military services have been finding it increasingly difficult to recruit enough young people and to retain those who are already in the ranks.

Pentagon officials have sharply increased spending on recruitment and boosted signing bonuses and educational benefits. They have mounted a special effort to draw in particular groups, such as Latino youths, who have been proportionally underrepresented in some branches of the military.